📢 SHOREHAM PORT 5TH ANNUAL SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 📢 READ THE FULL REPORT FOR 2024 here
Written by 7 May 2025
When Hitler’s death was announced in The Argus on 2nd May 1945, it was only a matter of time before Sussex people, exhausted after six years of war, got to celebrate the end of the hostilities which had ruled their lives for so long.
At Shoreham Port, one of the D-Day launching points for troops and equipment, VE Day action was strictly practical. The trustees’ minute books recorded that air raid shelters were to be dismantled, ARP equipment disposed of, and the same fate met the decontamination room, set up as a precaution in case the Germans launched a gas attack.
A temporary bridge over the locks was also taken down, after the trustees approached the Ministry of Home Security for permission. The offices of the resident naval officer in situ for most of the war as a link in the communication chain from Portsmouth and Southampton and over to the east, was to be closed by the 30th of June that year.
It was resolved that the Chairman of the Trustees would write to the officer and thank him for the help he and his colleagues provided during the war years. The wartime coastal lighting restrictions were lifted, and the Port prepared to face the future.
Elsewhere in Sussex on 8 May 1945 there were parades and church services celebrating VE Day, dance halls and pubs had a special dispensation to stay open until midnight, bunting and allied flags were hung across the streets and people sported victory rosettes as buttonholes.
Thanks to the Keep at Sussex University.
Image: Monochrome photographic print of crowds at the the V.E. Day Proclamation, Brighton. Taken from the Herald Archives, Volume 14 page 21, middle image.
